Clay Shirky: How social media can make history

Here’s my friend, NYU prof Clay Shirky, giving a 15-minute TED talk on how social media is changing our media and cultural landscape.

Specifically, Clay focuses on how the amateurization of media through Twitter, Facebook and text messaging helps citizens in repressive regimes to report on what’s happening, bypassing censors unless the government shuts off the Internet spigot entirely. The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics and ending the era of government control.JD Lasica, founder and former editor of Socialbrite, is co-founder of Cruiseable. Contact JD or follow him on Twitter or Google Plus.